![]() ![]() Thus the existence of magnetic monopoles (which have never been observed) could explain quantization of electric charge (which has been observed).Ĭaptivated by the beauty of his own proposal, Dirac concluded his paper by remarking, “One would be surprised if Nature had made no use of it.” Conversely, in order for the string to be invisible, if a magnetic monopole exists with magnetic charge, then all electric charges must be integer multiples of e. Dirac pointed out that an electron with electric charge e, transported around a string carrying flux, could detect the string (via what later came to be called the Aharonov-Bohm effect) unless the flux is an integer multiple of, where is Planck’s constant. For this picture to make sense, the string should be invisible. Dirac envisioned a magnetic monopole as a semi-infinitely long, infinitesimally thin string of magnetic flux, such that the end of the string, where the flux spills out, seems to be a magnetic charge. ![]() Aside from formulating relativistic electron theory and predicting the existence of antimatter, Dirac launched the quantum theory of magnetic monopoles in a famous 1931 paper. Flatlanders, confined to the two-dimensional surface of a topological insulator, are convinced by a magnetic monopole that a third dimension must exist. ![]()
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